Like Calls to Like
by Ergo Ipso Facto
Summary: FE10. Spirit charming is not quite what Pelleas expected. Second-playthrough spoilers; some one-sided Pelleas/Micaiah.


**I.**  
It wasn't entirely an uninformed decision, but it was a naïve one. Truth to tell, he'd more or less had his heart set on it from the moment he'd learned of the possibility. _The Spirits' Protection._ He had never had a protector before.

It wasn't that he truly needed one; he accepted philosophically the jibes and taunts that were his due as the quietest boy in the orphanage and one of the smallest. The odd blow, too, but those were infrequent and halfhearted, usually just the result of his being in someone's way. It had never yet been more than he could handle. But the idea that something or someone could actually be induced to take his side had been too novel, too amazing. His further research on the topic told him that it would not be so simple, that he would have to wield the spirit's power himself – that it carried certain quite serious risks. But he never managed to dislodge the conviction that this was the best possible course. So when he was thirteen, Pelleas finally made the pact.

He'd been prepared to sacrifice any of a thousand things. He'd never expected to give up silence.

His ears rang from the moment the pact was complete. His vision dimmed as well – but that returned to normal within an hour. His hearing didn't. The shrill whine waxed and waned but never stopped, never quite faded beyond hearing. By the third day he was afraid he was going deaf, and the more he worried, the louder the ringing became. He couldn't concentrate on anything. He couldn't hear anything but a single sustained sound, harsh and atonal. It trampled over his every attempt to sleep. The other boys soon noticed how tired and distracted he looked, and would trip him or sneak up and startle him. He never heard them coming, not once.

This was not the "protection" he'd signed up for.

The day a live toad was mysteriously insinuated into Pelleas's tunic was the day he went back to the library and tore from the shelf the book that had first told him of spirit charming. Standing there, he read it again, cover to cover. There was only one line that seemed to have any bearing on his situation: _"Once joined to a host it finds agreeable, the spirit will sing."_

**II.**  
In the years since forging the pact, he had learned something of the spirit's moods. It did protect him, after a fashion. Its tuneless song would rise to a nerve-scraping screech when the spirit wished to warn him of danger or steer him away from a certain course. It always reacted to all the people around him, too – to some more strongly than to others. But when it got agitated, all its songs sounded the same to him.

A bent-backed old man walked in, and the spirit sang louder immediately. Whether it meant "approach" or "avoid," Pelleas could not be sure. But as soon as his eyes lighted on the fur-cloaked figure, the man whipped his head around to stare back at him through a filthy monocle. When their eyes met, the spirit screamed.

Then the old man was beside him. His skin was thin and spotted like old parchment and he smelled of rot.

Pelleas took a cautious step back. "Good morning, sir," he said, barely able to hear his own voice over the spirit's shrieking. "Am I – am I in your way? These books – behind me –" He indicated the shelf of magical theory he'd been perusing. It was interesting material, and the spirit approved so heartily of his study of magic that it would restrain its singing to a low buzz while he read.

He remembered suddenly that he'd had to get special permission to enter this part of the library, and that he knew, at least by sight, everyone else who'd received a similar dispensation. This man was not one of them. Maybe he ought to report him to someone. "I – then I'll just leave you to it," he mumbled, and started for the door.

Viper-quick, the man's gnarled hand darted out and clamped onto his forearm.

"Or I could stay?" said Pelleas, beginning seriously to sweat.

"The mark," said the man. "Show me the mark the spirit gave you."

For the first time in six years, the spirit went silent.

Pelleas's stomach turned over. "You –"

"I was led here," said the old man. "By my own genius… and the spirits. The spirits call to each other. Where is your mark, boy?"

Pelleas showed him.

The man gave a wheezy cackle. "Excellent, excellent. I am Izuka," he said, "and you are going to be an important man. Practice looking regal. We will return for you."

The spirit sang once more as soon as Izuka had crossed the threshold, and would not answer for its strange behavior.

A week later, he saw Izuka in the street, accompanied by a stately veiled woman of whom the spirit had equally strong opinions. There were soldiers with them as well. They did not wear Begnion colors. Pelleas kept his eyes down and walked quickly, hoping the spirit would not give him away. He'd had to conclude after their last encounter that Izuka had an arrangement with a spirit of his own, and that the two communicated somehow.

_Tell that spirit to tell him to leave,_ Pelleas pleaded. _You've seen how Begnion is about armed Daeins. If word gets out about these soldiers, the whole town will be punished._  
The spirit sang louder. And louder still. Pelleas did not dare run – that would only guarantee Izuka's eyes on him. But he walked a little faster. If he could just get to that side street –

Izuka and his entourage had stopped.

Pelleas, dazed, stopped as well.

"That's him?" the woman said in a low voice. "That's my son?"

Izuka's eyes fixed on Pelleas. He smiled slowly, like the two of them had some great secret from the world. "Hail, Pelleas," he said. "Hail, the lost Prince of Daein!"

Pelleas was in no state to make sense of the chaos that ensued. People were shouting. Other people were kneeling. Izuka's soldiers hurried to surround him, and the veiled woman ran over and embraced him, weeping. He might have asked her what was going on, but he was both terribly confused and in the process of being crushed into her capacious bosom.

"Oh, my son," she sobbed. "We have so much lost time to make up for."

After a time, Izuka pried them apart. "Prince Pelleas. Lady Almedha. We have more important things to do than put on a show for the peasantry, hmm? Kingdoms to reclaim."

"Ah," said the woman. She took Pelleas's face into her hands. "My Pelleas, my sweet son. You will have your kingdom, and everyone will love you as I do." She pulled his head down again and kissed his forehead.

"What?" he said, finally.

Perhaps somebody answered him. Perhaps not. The spirit was singing too loudly for him to hear anything else – but this time, he thought he could make out a tune. It was singing for joy.

**III.**  
The Silver-Haired Maiden was amazing. In this, he and the spirit seemed to be in perfect agreement. Even before he met Micaiah, even when all he had were stories of the Dawn Brigade and Izuka's vague allusions to some plan that called for their presence, the barest mention of her would always set the spirit to singing in odd, trilling, birdlike tones. And when she was first brought before him –

The spirit had its strongest reactions to sub-humans, users of magic, and his mother. Among magic users, Izuka had a special place in its regard, for carrying another spirit with him. But Micaiah was another matter entirely. When she entered his tent, the spirit became a full chorus, a dozen piping voices filling his head with a song of impossible, otherworldly beauty. It caught at his throat and made the ground seem to drop away from beneath him –

And on the topic of otherworldly beauty, he could never set eyes on his new vice-general without feeling a powerful urge to touch her hair. Odd.

Anyway.

Her magic was rare and powerful, her healing abilities almost unheard-of in human history – that was why the spirit liked her so much. And she was a brave, kind young woman who loved Daein as much as he did – that was why _he_ liked her. Simple enough.

And then he saw the mark on her right hand. He might have been imagining things, but the spirit sounded almost smug about that. She was like him, then. He couldn't explain why it gave him such joy to find that they had something in common – of course, the spirit she had bonded with must be much more powerful than his, but – from what Izuka had told him, it seemed like called to like in this way. Probably her spirit protector had called to his, and that was why he was always so excited at the prospect of speaking to her (while at the same time, doing so tended to turn his bones into jelly).

He told her about it the very next time he was able to see her alone, and she proceeded to amaze him even more. She acted shocked when he mentioned the spirit pact she had entered. The spirit had chosen her as an infant, and she had never even known! Her magic must come as easily to her as breathing. He had picked the skill up relatively quickly, but _she_ –

He wondered if she knew the significance of the ringing in her ears. Being bonded to a spirit from birth, she would never have known silence. Maybe sometime he could tell her what he had learned, how to listen to the song, how to tune it out, how to guess when the spirit wanted to tell you something – but no, that would be stupid, wouldn't it? If she had had it all her life, she would have learned all that in her own time; taken it for granted, even. For her it might just be another sense. Maybe the spirit spoke to her in words she could understand. Maybe that was why she read people so well. Maybe that was where her visions came from.

He would have asked her to teach him, but that would feel like presumption. He reminded himself that he was the prince, but somehow that didn't help. She awed him, and seemed to find new ways to do it every day. Like calling to like, indeed – he only _wished_ he could be like her. But he could be near her when she saved Daein, and he could try to be worthy when she handed it over to him. And maybe once he was king he could ask her why everything she did was perfect, and why the spirits agreed.

**IV.**  
It shouldn't have been so difficult to readjust to the idea of being nobody. He had always known he was inept and inadequate beside the officials and advisors who'd surrounded him, with little facility for politics or negotiation or, on bad days, basic conversation. He'd felt out of place among the high and mighty – more out of place than usual. He should have taken it as a sign. But he hadn't, and it had been one terrible mistake after another, because someone had had a use for a random Daein of the proper age who could be passed off as Branded to Lady Almedha, and he had never had a mother before, and the spirit had told him it was all right.

Or had it? He was beginning to suspect now that it was not as articulate as he had first believed; it was obviously not half so benign. It didn't tell him about the presence of others for his own benefit – it was a being of power, and it was drawn to power, and that was all. It had never told him to trust Izuka or Almedha, only that one was a fellow spirit charmer and the other a laguz.

And it had never done anything so pretty as to arrange his meeting with Micaiah. She was Branded, carrying the blood of a heron, and it had never seen anything like her before. Anything else, he had supplied himself. He'd acted very foolishly around her, assuming a kinship, hoping that she would forgive his awkwardness because she felt the same thing, because a spirit spoke to her, too. And he had been wrong.

He should never have made the pact. Then Izuka would have found someone other than him, maybe someone who was stronger and wiser and wouldn't have signed the blood contract. So many lives would have been spared if, all those years ago, he'd been a little more willing to be alone.

There was nothing for it now but to atone. He handed the crown to Micaiah mere days after their descent from the tower. He locked his tomes of magic in a chest in the keep's armory, trying to tell the spirit he would not need it anymore, but its understanding of grand symbolic gestures was limited. It never got any quieter.

**V.**  
Maybe in some way he hadn't been wrong.

It had nothing to do with the spirit, but perhaps – _perhaps_ – like called to like, all the same. Almedha and Micaiah – possibly even Izuka – had spent long parts of their lives alone, like him, longer parts or more alone than they might have wished. And maybe there was a kinship there.

Either way, the Queen had asked him to have tea with her. He wasn't sure what she wanted to talk to him about, but the spirit sang its anticipation, and he had no grounds to argue.


End file.
